TI unveils fastest-ever DSP

Houston, Texas – Texas Instruments (TI) is boosting the speed of its TMS320C6455 DSP from 1 GHz to 1.2 GHz, giving it the fastest single-core DSP on the market. Despite the speed increase, the price of the chip remains unchanged at $245, so the extra speed is essentially "free."

TI is also unveiling a new newest member of its C6000 family, the TMS320C6452. The device comes in 720 and 900 MHz versions, and targets telcom, medical, and emerging applications. The TMS320C6452 is an upgrade to TI's TMS320C6414/15/16 DSPs. Compared to the C6414/15/16 parts, the C6452 has more on-chip memory, increased I/O bandwidth (DDR2 bus width is doubled to 32-bits and PCI clock rate is doubled to 66 MHz), and better cycle efficiency due to the C64x+ core (C6414/15/16 devices use the C64x core).

The C6452 also features two new SGMII Ethernet MAC ports and a gigabit Ethernet switch. The Ethernet switch allows each DSP in a multi-DSP system to process only the packets associated with that DSP. In addition, the C6452 includes a Telcom Serial Interface Port (TSIP) for seamless connection to common telcom data streams. TI reports that the TSIP can handle twice as many TDM time slots as the McBSP interconnect found on other C645x DSPs. Table 1 compares the C6415T, C6452, and C6455 devices.

Table 1. High-performance TI DSPs.

TI partner Adaptive Digital Technologies (ADT) plans to port its G.PAK VoIP software onto the C6452. ADT calculates that the 900 MHz C6452 can support 82 channels of VoIP in a typical configuration. In comparison, the 1 GHz C6415T GHz can support 52 channels. With the 1 GHz C6415T priced at $176 and the 900 MHz C6452 priced at $119, this represents a roughly 2x improvement in channels-per-dollar.

The C6452 and C6455 are available now. The 900 MHz C6452 costs $119, and the 720 MHz version costs $94. The 1.2 GHz C6455 costs $245, and the 1 GHz version costs $199. (All prices are for 10,000-unit orders.) Evaluation boards for the C6452 and 1.2 GHz C6455 are available now and priced at $1,295 and $595 respectively.